John Harris

It's doing well with critics, especially for the type of film it is. My 20-something-year-old son saw an early screening and loved it. Says it delivers exactly what it promises.

Have you read his 50-page Spider-Man scriptment? A genius he may be... but JC needs to stay far away from superhero movies!

Ouch. I thought $4 mil was the floor for Wednesday.

Agreed. They got an amazing cast and a treasure trove of characters for which they've built up a ton of goodwill from the audience but have put out exactly one truly memorable film since Thanos was put down. And I'm the biggest MCU fan there is! I'd argue that the biggest loss to the franchise since Endgame was not RDJ and Evans, but Markus and McFeely. Those guys know how to write these characters, and how to put together a solid screenplay with a gazillion characters and still maintain a coherent plot with a true/palpable threat, and plenty of humor where appropriate. I didn't hate Quantumania as much as some of you but it's another so-so effort and a drastic course-correction is needed. Feige should just throw whatever he's cooking (and whomever he's cooking it with) regarding "The Kang Dynasty" and "Secret Wars" in the trash and toss however much money is necessary at Markus/McFeely and the Russos to bring them back to lead these upcoming tentpole team-up movies.

I haven't posted in any AVATAR threads yet but I'll play! How much do you like the Star Wars franchise? 8 How much do you like MCU? Phases 1-3 10 Phase 4 7 How much do you like the Avatar franchise? 4 Would Avatar flopping bring you enjoyment? No. I would enjoy watching it underperform, though, mostly because JC has become an unbearably pompous public figure at this point, and he could use a pin in his balloon... and the film just didn't do it for me. I love some of his films but the AVATAR movies leave me cold, so I'm bummed that he's going to end up spending two decades of his career on this. Would rather see him tackle something original again. Are you wishing for meltdowns on this website? No, the looooooong squabbling makes it that much harder to locate the BO numbers that I'm usually after when I visit this site! Peace to all, and Happy Holidays!

This film has a unique opening strategy - which no doubt has been discussed/analyzed a lot in this thread (which I'm too lazy to read of course!) - so I really don't know whether that's a poor/OK/good/great number. Seems fine. I'll be very curious to see how the legs are, as I loved the opening 2/3 before getting pretty bored during the third act. You really want your movies to work the opposite if you want tons of repeat business! I left feeling little desire to see it again. We'll see how the rest of the movie-going public feels.

I went to a Tuesday evening showing and there were still surprised gasps when they appeared. My son even leaned over and said “how do these people NOT KNOW?!?”

i agree, and I feel bad for people who have gotten spoiled already. It sucks that they won’t experience the film relatively cold as I did. Like Endgame, it’s a very rare communally joyful experience to sit in a crowded theater with fellow fans and watch this unfold for everyone together. OTOH… this didn’t happen by accident. I basically avoided ANY social media from the time the movie premiered on Monday night until I sat my butt down in the theater on Thursday. I think we’ve all learned that that’s pretty much the ONLY way to avoid having anything spoiled in these types of films. I can’t control the thousands of yahoos who jump on the Net as soon as they learn that “____is in this!!!” Or “____ dies in this!!!” They can’t wait to try to ruin it for people. But I CAN control what *I* do, so I stayed away for a few days until I was actually in the theater to see it. Sadly, fans who have to wait a week or more are just screwed.

Finally saw this, and really liked it. de Armas, Craig, and Evans are so good in their roles. Johnson should stick to original material as this and Looper were both great. Once we found out the details of Harlan's demise early on, was I the only one who thought the old man should've just walked downstairs and slit his throat in front of Walt, grandma, Marta, and whoever else was still in the house at that time? He clearly had a flair for the dramatic, telling each of his would-be heirs that he'd be cutting them off earlier that evening. Considering the minute details of the plan he came up with to cover everything up for Marta in a matter of seconds, wouldn't an in-plain-sight suicide have solved everything MUCH more easily?! "You all have disappointed me so much, you've left me no choice but to do this...!" SLIT

I loved Sam Rockwell's work in JJR, also. The two lead kids are great. I laughed at Waititi as Hitler but expected him to be knock-it-out-of-the-park hilarious but that just didn't happen. It's difficult to make Adolf funny. I don't see this as a serious Oscar contender. Despite the subject matter, it just feels too lightweight and surprisingly safe. But I felt similarly about Green Book, so what do I know?

I saw it last night and the changes from the book are numerous and significant, especially in the third act, Overall, it was an enjoyable horror flick. It has some pacing issues - even though some key scenes from the book don't appear in the film, I still felt like it would've been better served cutting back on about 20 of its 150 minutes. The screening audience with whom I saw it chuckled during a couple scenes that weren't intended to be funny - never a good sign, especially for a scary movie. It did get some applause at the end, though. There were a few scares and at least one scene that's genuinely disturbing and uncomfortable to watch - if you read the book, you can probably guess what that is. McGregor does solid work as Dan; the young actress playing Abra is great; Rebecca Ferguson is suitably sexy/scary as Rose The Hat. I'd give it a 7/10. Really hard to guess the box office - is the general audience aware that this is a direct sequel to The Shining? King fans obviously are. I'd like to see it do well, but $100 mil domestic seems like the absolute ceiling to me - I recommend it to King fans, but I'm not sure I'd send hard-core horror fans to see Doctor Sleep. Honestly, it's just not that scary.

I've been pleasantly surprised by Joker's holds so far. I didn't love the film - it's just not in my wheelhouse - but it's certainly well crafted and Phoenix is amazing. And it's great to see yet another film prove that "Comic Book Movie Fatigue" is still not close to being a thing!

I thought so, too, while watching it. But after reviewing the timeline, I'm kinda convinced it was a flashback, but probably not a 100% "factual" one. The film takes place in the summer of '69, while The Green Hornet was cancelled during the summer of '67. It's still entirely possible that it's a fantasy/flashback from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, which is how I look at it. Cliff Booth did meet up with Bruce Lee, and they had a confrontation of some sort, but the details may have been greatly embellished by Booth!

Heat wave chasing people into the local air-conditioned cineplex more than usual...?

Wow, that's quite a bump from Endgame's $1.199 M estimate!

Was really hoping Marvel would announce some sort of team-up movie for the end of Phase Four. But Blade was a cool surprise!

I posted a link to a CNBC article with this "new" Avatar total. How do we know which is correct? Seems every other article comparing Endgame to Avatar uses the BOM number.

A couple of CNBC articles cite that number ($2,789,705,275), like this one: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/06/avengers-infinity-war-crosses-1-billion-faster-than-any-movie.html Strange, I never noticed that there's a different number floating out there for Avatar. Mojo still shows $2,787,965,087. Where did that extra $1.7 mil come from, I wonder?

Mojo shows a final weekend number for EG ($2,104,276). Do such final domestic numbers get corrected very often? Once those final down-to-the-dollar numbers show up, I assume the bean-counters are done and that's the number we're getting, period...?

Endgame did it, also.

Endgame? Or do you consider that pre-summer? I mean, we knew it’d be huge, but $850-mil, “sniffing at Avatar’s WW record” huge?

That's a solid point. It didn't bother me because I always stick around for the after-credits scene. And some of them have shown some "important" plot developments that may not necessarily change the film dramatically but do more than just set up the future (Far From Home's does both, yes). Ragnarok's for instance, went from leaving the heroes in a relatively good place - having escaped Ragnarok on Asgard, Thor and his fellow Asgardians are seen flying through space - then the after-credits scene shows them confronted by Thanos' ship. Similarly, Ant Man and the Wasp ends on a happy note, but then we see Scott trapped in the Quantum Realm while his friends get dusted, leaving him in a very different state than viewers who didn't stay for the scene might think. Infinity War's after credits scene (with Fury disappearing right after contacting Captain Marvel) is also an important development. Some OTOH, are played just for laughs, like Iron Man 3's, Ant-Man and the Wasp's second stinger, The Avengers... I consider these scenes to be part of the movie, so I'm OK seeing the big Fury reveal at the end. But your argument makes sense - FFH's was a little different. I don't necessarily agree that, even without these scenes, staying for the credits is a complete waste of time. The people I'm with usually take that time to discuss the film we just watched as we note anything interesting that might pop up during the credits. But that's me.

I believe Thor and definitely Captain Marvel were mentioned, when Peter asked Fury how come some other superheroes haven't been recruited for this mission. Maybe you're referring to a specific scene that only mentioned Strange...?

I think it's kinda cool that Marvel has found a way to get people to sit through the credits - not a "black screen" - so we can take note of all the people who contributed to these films. I like looking through the cast list, the "thanks" to Marvel creators I've followed since the 1970s, the music that was played during the film... But hey, if you didn't enjoy the movie, I completely understand you wanting to exit ASAP. But then why complain about Marvel doing what Marvel has done since the first Iron Man flick?

To paraphrase Rhett Butler, "That's their misfortune." After 23 movies, I'm still surprised to see people getting up and leaving the theater during the credits of these Marvel films. Where do they have to be that they can't wait another 5-10 minutes? The theaters I go to do not have major traffic hassles, so they aren't "beating the rush" like fans who leave concerts before the encore are.